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Is it April 1st?

FORMER state premier Jeff Kennett has provoked a gay rights storm by backing a football club that sacked a trainer for being gay.

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“The club felt that once this had been pointed out and you had this gentleman there who was obviously close to young men – massaging young men – it ran an unnecessary risk and that’s why it decided it was best that he not perform those duties again. So the club was trying to do the right thing,” Mr Kennett said.

Mr Kennett said it was as if the club had a pedophile trainer.

“It’s the same if you have a pedophile there as a masseur, right?”

“And you might say the pedophile would do no damage, but once it was pointed out to you, you have a duty of care to those underage children not to put them in a situation of risk.”

He could not guarantee a gay trainer would be welcome at Hawthorn, adding: “I don’t know if we’ve got any.

“I’m just saying at the moment we have a duty of care to our players and staff and you have to make judgments on that. If you don’t do it you end up with potential legal liability.”

After the good work Kennett has done to counter stereotypes and stigma surrounding mental illness as a spokesperson for Beyond Blue, in a few short sentences he manages to propagate two of the most damaging and absurd stereotypes that exist in modern society:

People who are attracted to adults who are of the same sex are also going to be attracted to adolescents or children of the same sex; and

Homosexuals are inherently promiscuous and will attempt to have sex with anyone and everyone of the same sex as themselves.

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The paedophile analogy in hindsight wasn’t the right one in the this context but don’t further misquote what part of the analogy he was pushing.

Read it carefully and you will see that he is defending the clubs right to protect their players rather then agreeing that the club was right in there views. He said:
“So the club was trying to do the right thing,”
He doesn’t say they did the right thing, does he? He says “The club felt” it was a risk. Now I don’t agree it is a risk (having a gay trainer), but I agree that if they feel it is a risk that they should act.

Now the Paedophile analogy as I said earlier was a bad one and if Jeff had his time again, I am sure he would have said axe murder or something else that a club would find a risk as that is what he seemed to be linking too.

Lastly, remember that this is an article be a jorno that is looking for a story. Its not a great story to write that Jeff thinks clubs should try to protect players from what THEY (i.e. Boonie doon fc) feel is risky. Its better to say that Jeff is homophobic or thinks there is no difference between paedophiles and gays as that makes for a better story. We don’t know what situation the interview was done in, we don’t know what the questions where that were asked by the jorno, we only know the parts of answers that the jorno felt helped his story.

So I put to you, don’t get straight away defensive, try to look at it from the other side, say “is what the author says he is saying really what his quotes are saying”?
Because I challenge you to point to a quote of Jeff’s that directly says he feels being gay is bad or dangerous and when I say a quote, I don’t mean chopping words off or changing things.

Sorry, Molly – I have taken another look at what Kennett said, and I have also looked at today’s news reports where he says he was taken out of context and was talking about issues of litigation. I am well aware that quotations can be made to look worse than they are because the surrounding conversation is replaced by the journalist’s reporting (or story-telling). But I still don’t see any way that what Kennett said can be redeemed. His argument regarding a club’s duty of care and potential legal liability is entirely flawed.

First, it would appear to me that dismissing someone based on his sexual orientation would contravene both the Equal Opportunity Act and the Victorian Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities – Kennett should be well aware of this.

Second, even though you are correct that Kennett is saying that the club perceived a risk and didn’t personally echo that perception, the idea that a club is free (or even obliged) to act on anything it perceives as a risk is nonsense. To draw on Kennett’s good works as an example, would he apply the same reasoning if a football club had a trainer suffering from a mental disorder and they sacked him because they were concerned he might be a danger to the players?

Third, both Kennett’s original analogy and your proposed substitute analogy of an axe murderer are entirely different from the real case – they both relate to situations where a person would presumably have a criminal history. In this situation, we are dealing with a “perceived risk” based on the fact that a person engages in a particular form of consensual sexual behaviour. Kennett may be right that a club could be liable if it fails to take reasonable steps to fulfill its duty of care to the players, but reasonable steps would seem to include things such as criminal record checks, but not finding out whether someone engages in a perfectly legal activity that has no connection to or implications for their job performance or the risk they pose to players.

These are the clear and explicit flaws in Kennett’s reasoning as evidenced by his quotations. Beyond that, the paedophilia analogy is beyond ill-advised – the fact that this is what he equated with homosexuality has unsettling implications. Also, there is the fact that he has an extensive history in politics and should have been well aware of how his comments might be reported. I can’t see a way that his comments can be viewed as anything but extremely disturbing.